Bureaucratic burden on GPs to be reduced, pledges 10-year plan

The Government has renewed its pledge to cut NHS bureaucracy as part of its long-awaited 10-year plan, including for GPs.

The document, published last week, said that the Government has already begun to cut ‘excessive’ bureaucracy through the abolition of NHS England and ‘the Red Tape challenge’.

It revealed that the first step in the abolition of NHS England will be to combine the headquarters of the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care, with integration of teams beginning ‘in the coming months’, and the process of abolishing NHS England ‘will be complete within the next two years’.

The plan added: ‘The major benefit will be the reduction in the burden that central bodies place on systems and providers.

‘We will replace the culture of bureaucracy that has disempowered local leaders, through endless micromanagement, with proportionate and streamlined regulation and oversight.’

In a speech in the House of Commons, health secretary Wes Streeting also confirmed that the plan will abolish ‘more than 200 bodies’.

It will abolish 201 NHS organisations, bodies and entities, including Healthwatch England, Health Services Safety Investigations Body and the National Guardian’s Office and also close Commissioning Support Units, set up as part of the 2012 Lansley reforms, as well as Integrated Care Partnerships.

The plan also said that it will deliver the recommendations of the Red Tape challenge, as well as focusing on outcomes rather than bureaucratic processes.

Mr Streeting announced the challenge last year, in which NHS England asked GPs, hospitals and ICBs ‘what works well and what needs to change’ and the feedback was then considered by a group of doctors in primary and secondary care.

NHS England had already said that the bureaucracy review would cover:

Medicines and prescribing
Data, digital and technology
Workforce, training and education
Contractual and financial flows
Metrics

The plan added: ‘Across the country, GPs told us how the burden of bureaucracy steals joy from work and time from patient care.

‘They are held back by a bureaucratic system focused on controls and process, rather than incentives and outcomes.’

The plan pledged to support ICBs to develop a provider landscape that ‘actively encourages innovation’ and is not bound to traditional expectations of how services should be arranged.

That could mean ‘GPs running hospitals, nurses leading neighbourhood providers or acute trusts running community services’, something Mr Streeting had already hinted at last month.

And ICBs will also be given powers to contract a wider range of providers – including NHS trusts – for neighbourhood health services.

The plan also said that in the next two years, the Government will support providers to roll out technology to cut ‘unnecessary administrative and clerical work’, including a wider use of artificial intelligence (AI).